Hunger of the Soul
by Compass West
Summary: Oneshot. What if you were never meant to be? What if everything you ever knew were a lie, a false reality created by the death of delusions? What would happen if you found the real world and had no way of coming back? SG1/Genius: The Transgression.


**Hunger of the Soul**

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing here. Except the Genius original characters. They are mine.

**Author's Note: **The idea of a Stargate/Genius crossover has been bugging me for some time. This is going to be pretty confusing to people who don't know about Genius: The Transgression and the concept of manes and bardos. The whole game is available free for download on the interwebs. Seek and ye shall find.

The street was empty. It was just another regular day for the town of Colorado Springs. Samantha Carter frowned as she drove down the street. There had been a severe lack of planet-threatening crisis's lately and General Hammond had decided she needed some time off after all of the exhaustive work she'd been doing. She'd protested but Hammond had shown her latest medical reports with a note from Janet saying that her work-related stress was reaching critical levels.

So here she was, driving home, driving away from the set of alien equipment she'd been studying in the lab for the last few weeks.

She ran her calculations again in her head. If she…argh! It was hard enough deciphering it in the lab, now she had to try to keep doing it for the next few days by memory alone!

While she was contemplating higher things, she forgot about lower, yet just as important things such as a sense of direction. Absentmindedly, she had taken the wrong turn-off several corners back and had yet to realise it.

There are ways between worlds and they are usually only used by those who know them. But there's always a chance that someone might stumble onto them accidentally.

Before she knew it, Carter had taken a wrong turn ninety degrees off reality and had left what she had known of the world. She had driven out of her limited bardo…and into the real world.

Luckily the two looked very alike so she didn't notice the difference even after she realised she was going the wrong way. It was when she pulled up to where house should have been when she realised something was very, very wrong.

It was not her house.

She got out of the car slowly, a chill going down her spine. Some things looked familiar but in that same way, everything was different. She had only walked a few steps when she felt an aching, gnawing emptiness inside of her. It was like hunger but not a hunger of the body. It felt like a hunger of the mind, a hunger of the soul.

She clutched her head she fell to her knees. Before, her mind had been filled with creativity, sparking with brilliance. But it was beginning to feel empty. The knowledge was still there, but none of it seemed to make sense anymore.

"Are you okay Miss?"

She looked up to see a little boy of about five or six looking at her curiously. How long had she been sitting here? Her eyes only saw the boy for a moment before looking beyond.

She could see light streaming out of him. She blinked but she could still see it. It was only a dim glow but it was a raging fire compared to the dull void inside her. Why was he lighted while she was dark?

She was missing something.

She needed the light. It would make everything better.

Without thinking about it, she reached out and grabbed the boy around the head and pulled him off the ground. She didn't know what she was doing. Only that it was right.

She needed the light. The boy began to scream. She ignored his struggles as she thrust one hand over his face. How could she get it? How?

Before she could find out, something smacked her hard on the back of her head, causing her to drop the boy.

A distraught woman punched her in the head again. It felt horrible. Not just the pain but also the contact. She had felt a mild itching with the boy but this…

There were things crawling under her skin. Everything was wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrongwrongwrong,d,sdsafsdfdfgyjhstghgrareszhx……!

The last thing she saw was a glimmer of light before the darkness claimed her.

She woke up in a cell. Well, she assumed it was. The room was featureless and devoid of furniture. The sole window was small and barred. There was no door. But when she had tried to leave, she had been repelled by a force field of some kind. Just where had she ended up…?

A few minutes later, a man entered the room. He was of medium height with brown hair. He was wearing a lab coat of some sort. That is all she noticed about him. No doubt Sam would have noticed more but all she could focus on was the light inside him.

The boy had just been a dim glow, candlelight given off by a mind of limited knowledge. This man was filled with it. Fire curled inside him and light streamed out of his eyes.

'Here.' he said. He stretched out his arm and took her hand. Her eyes widened as the light streamed down his arm and into her, filling the emptiness, sating the hunger.

"There you go," he said, pulling away. "You don't need more yet."

He paused for a moment before turning back to her.

"Tell me, what does it look like?"

"What does what look like?" she answered, confused by everything.

'The Mania. I can't see it. Only things like Orphans, Calculus Vamps and Manes like you can actually see it. I've never really got a chance to talk to any of you about it."

'…What are you talking about? What's a mane?"

'Oh…" he stumbled back. "Oh…well, do you know your way back to your Bardo? Your realm? Am I ringing any bells here?"

She got to her feet. The man was short and didn't seem to have any muscle tone to him. She could overpower him easily. She just needed to distract him.

"Bardos? Realms? What are you talking about?"

Before he said anything, she decked him with a right cross. Well, that was the plan anyway. Instead her fist collided with the same kind of force field that was keeping her inside the room. He stepped back.

'You don't know do you?"

"Don't know what? Tell me! Tell me!" Sam was getting agitated. She was fed up and tired of all this and she was going to get answers, goddamnit! But before she could do anything more he walked hastily out of the room, leaving her alone.

Mark Averly walked slowly back to the rest of his collaborative.

"We've got a problem."

They clustered around him. Aside from Jon, the collaborative included Jill Lennox and Jonas Dagwell. Garth Jackson, the fourth member, was away on a separate mission. The only reason they were here in Colorado Springs was to investigate rumours of a bardo accessible in the area.

Their contact said that it led to another Colorado Springs, but more than that. This bardo was massive apparently. Fuelled by ever-present conspiracy theories throughout the history of mankind. A massive bardo, based off an amalgam of old science myths and fears that had taken a life of it's own.

'Let me guess," Sarah said, her arms folded. "She's from the Hollow Earth."

'Pffh," Tom said dismissively. "She's not an Ubermensch. Is she? Actually when you think about it…She's blonde, blue eyed, good looking and strong. And a mane of course. Not to mention the way she tried to vamp a kid. A _kid _for God's sake!"

He turned to Jon.

"Are you sure she isn't one of them? We don't want Nazi's chasing after us. Again."

"Relax. She ain't no FN. She's from the bardo were looking for alright. I checked while we were prying that woman off her. Pretty lucky of us too, I might add. If we hadn't been there, her Havoc would have only gotten worse. Luckily, it only seems to have been a short bout of temporary insanity. She's fine now."

Tom visibly relaxed.

'Good. What are we waiting for? Get her to tell us where we can get to this 'SGC' bardo. Some of that tech there seems pretty good. Better than we can get from the Martians at any rate."

"Now that is the problem. She doesn't know her way back. She doesn't know anything! She thinks her world was the real one and we have no way of sending her back!"

He paused to let this sink in. Sarah looked at the monitor displaying the image of Sam inside her containment cell.

"You mean…she doesn't know?" she shook her head. "That poor thing. She thinks she's real. How is she going to live here?" she shivered.

'How are we going to tell her? That everything and everyone she knew isn't real? That she shouldn't exist? That she is going to have to Calculus Vamp people's thoughts just to survive?"

Jonathon looked at the sullen figure on the monitor.

'I don't know. I just…don't know."

END 


End file.
